by Amanda Adair
She stops and looks at me in shock.
“Hey,” she says and slowly walks past me.
I don’t want her to leave me here without any more info on why everyone’s ignoring me. “Wait, what’s the problem?” I try to be as calm as possible. It probably isn’t her fault.
“Nothing,” she says, smiles and walk away.
I look around the cafeteria. Anna walks towards Everly who stands nearby the salad bar. Where’s Cora? I spot her at a table with Piper and Penelope. Axel’s there, and Tammy, just no Jason in sight. I walk towards them thinking I shouldn’t. I don’t want any type of conflict with anyone on my second day of school. I just don’t want them to ignore me. Maybe Anna’s right, maybe it’s nothing. Did I maybe just talk myself into believing they giggle because of me? Did they really point at me? Maybe they pointed at Bran or whoever was close to me or between me and them. I wouldn’t know for sure. But they did in fact not want to sit with me. Anna didn’t ask me to have lunch with them either. When I stand directly behind Piper I stop walking. Why is she always facing the window, turning the back on everybody else in the cafeteria?
“Hey,” I say.
They’re all staring at me without saying anything. Penelope, Axel, Cora and some girls and guys I know from class but haven’t talked to that much. Piper doesn’t turn around. I didn’t think about what to say, so I decide to sit down first. I can’t just ask them why they’re giggling behind my back, why they’re ignoring me, why they’re pointing at me. I walk towards the spare seat next to Cora but before I can even sit down she quickly puts her bag onto it. Piper and Cora start laughing. I stand in front of the seat with her bag, with the tray in my hand, and feel like everything happens in slow motion. I watch Piper bend forward and put her hand on her chest while she’s laughing.
“Go away,” she says as she sits straight again.
“Why?,” I ask.
“Because you’re a slut,” one of the girls I don’t know says. Her hair is as copper red as mine but straight. She’s wearing the same white crop top as Piper that reveals her shoulders and belly button. They wear it so tight, maybe one or two sizes too small, that it’s not a challenge to guess what cup size they might have.
“Just move,” Piper says.
My brain seems to stop working due to overexertion. I don’t understand why they invited me to their game night yesterday just to reject me today. I just stand there and can’t move or walk or breathe.
The girl with the same hair color as mine holds her phone close to my face. On the screen there’s a photo of a girl with copper red curls. It’s me. She’s sitting on the ground, looking down at herself, at some other girl’s hand that lies on her breast. The hand’s covering the nipple, but you can see a lot of her skin. It’s the photo Penelope took of Piper and me. It was her dare, not mine. I didn’t want this. You can’t even see Piper. It’s just her arm and hand. I stare at it until phone suddenly disappears from my sight. I don’t know what to say or do. I still can’t move or breathe. I feel my face blushing from, it turns all red and gets hot. I’ve never been embarrassed like that. Did everybody see this photo?
“That’s… “
I can’t finish the sentence. I haven’t even thought of how this sentence should continue.
“THAT’S-THAT’S-THAT’S,” Piper mimics me and continues eating her chicken nuggets.
“What are you waiting for?,” a girl next to the seat with Cora’s bag says. “Go away.” She pushes me away with her hands on my stomach, not hard, but I still step back.
Most of the students at the other tables start staring at us. I should say something I guess but I can’t.
“Slut,” Piper says as I walk away.
All eyes are on me while I walk around the room. Whatever table I pass by the students either look down or stare at me but in all cases they prevent me from sitting down, either by putting their bag on the seat or by pushing their empty trays towards. I give up and walk towards the door. Before I leave I bring the tray back to the counter. I haven’t eaten anything. It feels like being a fish that laid on the beach and finally made it back to the ocean. I can finally take a breathe as I close the door and stand alone in the hallway. During lunch the hallways are always quite deserted. I need some time to think, to process what’s just happened so I lock myself into a toilet room. The restrooms at Maywood are just as off-putting as most restrooms. There are scribbles on the back of the door. Lots of black, blue and red letters and words, sometimes even sentences, written with Edding pens or pencils. There are weaker layers underneath so I assume the school tries to get rid of those scribbles from time to time.
I sit on the toilet seat and stare at the letters until lunchtime is over.
Slut
Ava eats dirt
Robbie eats even more dirt
Robbie You eat shit
Mr hernandez eats pussy
If you read this you dumb
1/5 stars wouldn’t pee here again
I love you Rita
Love your crocs – no one ever
Ugly bitch
F** the system
Currently enjoying the rich bitch life in paris while you’re shitting in here
What hell did I end up in? Why the hell do I have to go to school here? The outer glow is all fake, all untrue. I try to prevent these phrases to burn into my head by googling random stuff on my phone. I end up reading some poems by Emily Dickinson, Rupi Kaur and Phillis Wheatley. They distract me for some time but as soon as the bell rings I’m back in the here and now. It’s time to go to business studies. I hear some girls walk in and talk. When I open the door they stand in front of the sinks, staring at me through the mirror. Even they start laughing. I haven’t ever met them. Who are they?
I was also stared at when I entered the next classroom. It was the same as in the cafeteria, most of them put their bags on the table as soon as I come closer, so I end up sitting in the last row, next to no one. There’s nobody on my left and nobody on my right side.
“Hope you’ve had some great lunchtime,” the teacher says. “We haven’t met yet, I’m Mrs. Stanton.”
I wouldn’t exactly call it great. The girls at Maywood are so different from my friends and classmates in Toronto. I feel ashamed. What if the photo ends up on the internet? What if it’s already online? What if my parents see it? I didn’t expect this when Mom and Dad convinced me to move here. I thought it would be fun. I was all excited because I was about to meet even more friends than I already made in San Francisco and Toronto. Even a girl from my birth town, New Orleans, Louisiana, came visiting me last year. We rarely visit each other but luckily her Mom’s still a good friend of mine.
“Let’s start by getting to know each other,” she says. We haven’t played games and done icebreakers in in some of the lessons. We don’t need to do it now. I really don’t feel like it. I feel sick and I want to go home.
“Let’s start with you,” she says and looks at a boy in the first row. Starting with him means I’m probably last. I don’t want to do this. I just want to go home.
“I’m Jeremy,” he says.
“Tell us something about you,” Mrs. Stanton says. She’s extremely old, she’s probably retiring soon, maybe next year. Despite her age she still trys to look younger by coloring her hair blonde. But her hairline is white. “How old are you? Where are you from?”
“I’m fourteen years old and I’m from Philadelphia.”
“Did you move here with your parents?,” she asks. When I think about it she doesn’t look like a business studies teacher but a history or music teacher.
“I live with my grandparents.”
“Tell us some fun fact about you.”
Jeremy thinks about it for a second. “I was born exactly nine month after Valentine’s Day.”
Mrs. Stanton starts laughing. “Nice.”
She ask the person next to Jeremy, whose name is Dylan and he once caught the football during a soccer game in London, then she turns to the
next student and the next and so on. Two seats. Two places further away from me sits Lydia. They all have amazing fun facts.
“I’m allergic to laundy detergent, so I have a pretty good excuse for never doing my laundry.”
“I can play the organ.”
“I speak Vietnamese.”
“I spoke with a strong Southern accent until I was ten years old.”
“I have visited eight countries so far.”
“I have two guinnea pigs. Their names are Yin and Yang. One’s black and one’s white. But I call the black one Yang and the white one Yin. Normally Yin is the black half with the white dot and Yang is the white side with the black dot.”
After that one everybody was so confused with all the black and white talk.
“I want to become a lawyer but I don’t want to study law but biology,” says Lydia.
“Good luck with becoming a lawyer as a biology major, Lydia,” Mrs. Stanton says. “Who’s next?”
“Me. I’m Samantha.”
I’m glad neither Piper nor her mean friends are here now. Some of the students now looking at me have probably seen the photo. I can’t believe Piper just cropped herself out of the picture. Why does she do that? It was her dare. I couldn’t do anything to prevent her from touching me, it was all too fast. It went all so fast.
“Your fun fact?”
I need to think of something not remarkable, so nobody would remember me even better. I’m now the girl who shows off her breasts and is fondled by another girl. The photo was cropped out in a way that you can’t even tell it’s Piper’s house I’m at. Penelope probably sent it to everyone without telling the truth, that she was present and that Piper touched me. No one would talk to me, so how should I know what she told them?
“I went to an acting summer camp in Canada six years in a row.”
Or was it five years? I can’t think straight right now. I’m too busy worrying about that photo. I can’t tell anyone, not even the teachers. It’s embarrassing and I’m half naked.
“Nice one,” Mrs. Stanton says. That’s what she told everyone.
This school day’s over. I survived it.
At least I thought I survived it when the bell rang after the last lesson but at home all the feelings are coming up and create some messed up chaos in my head and brain. I’ve managed to get out of Mom’s way at home and went straight to my room. I told her I have some important homework to do that can’t wait. Now I sit on the white fuzzy round carpet in the middle of my room, leaning on some cozy bench under the window. I shouldn’t have gone to Piper’s game night. I should’ve stayed at home that day. It ruined everything. I wonder if Piper plans stuff like this or if she takes advantage of situations like that spontaneously. I still don’t know how she sent the photo to everybody in school. Maybe it’s some messaging app, maybe via social media. I’m so worried it might be public that I search for her on the web. I get up, grab my laptop and search for her. Piper Flores. Normally I only use my laptop for research, documentaries, for reading and writing threads about books and TV shows or for doing my homework, of course. I was never interested in Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or anything like that.
Come on, there must be some way to find you. Bingo. The second result shows an article from the Maywood Middle School Blog. Apparently Piper and four other students went on a trip with their art teacher to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. That was two years ago. I also spot her on some of the photos Google shows on top of the search results. There are two selfies, probably quite old, and a picture of her and others in front of the MoMa. I scroll down and click on the third headline.
Piper Flores (@cutiepiper888) • Instagram photos and videos
Her description draws my attention first.
nyc based vsco girl + fashionista
get in loser we’re going shopping
I read it to myself. I can’t believe someone would actually put this into their description. You could write anything about yourself. That you’re writing fanfiction, that you’re a book nerd, that you’re a high school student in Maywood but why be so exagerating? She’s not in New York City and she doesn’t come from there, she said she’s from Philadelphia. Next to her fake relationship with NYC and the quote from Mean Girls there’s her profile picture. A dakr blurry photo of her sitting on some meadow in the night. She leans on her arms and has her legs spread out towards the photographer. She’s wearing a short jeans skirt and a crop top. I don’t even know what a vsco girl is. I only know VSCO is some app. I never used it. Whenever I have no clue I google it. So, apparently a VSCO girl is someone who wears scrunchies and tube tops, Vans or Birkenstocks, and carries a hydroflask. I agree with the tube tops (whatever that is, sounds like a crop top) Birkenstocks and Vans but Piper so far hasn’t worn any scrunchies or taken a hydroflask with her. I guess it’s just a term she uses for herself in order to make people on the internet think she’s cool, that she’s your average American teenage girl.
I try to focus. That’s not what I was looking for. I don’t want to get to know Piper Flores. I don’t want to know what’s her favorite quote from Mean Girls. I don’t want to know where she thinks she’s based in. I just want to know where she posted the photo of me with her hands on my breast. I scroll through her pictures. There are a lot of pictures of herself surrounded by some friends at various places like the streets, her garden or at school. There are some selfies of her, either with Penelope in the back, or all alone. There is also one picture of her on the black driver’s seat of some BMW and one of the sunset here in Maywood. But I can’t find the photo of me. Maybe she just shared it with her group of friends and they sent it to others and that way it spread. I don’t want to think about it. I feel ashamed and embarrassed. Mom and Dad can never see this photo. I can never talk to anyone about it. It looks like I’m the one to blame. It looks like I’m not even defending myself, as if I wanted to be touched like that.
26
I simply couldn’t fall asleep yesterday. It took me two and a half hours of lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, until I was finally able to just close my overtired eyes, forget what happened and sleep deeply. In the dark the fluorescent star stickers are shining in a warm white color. I took them off the ceiling. When I was a child I wanted to watch the stars before I fall asleep. I have these star stickers since I was six years old. After so many years, after growing up and moving twice, it was time to say goodbye. I slept for only five hours. They’ll forget what happened soon, I say to myself as I walk to the bus station. At school everything is just like yesterday, nothing has changed. During the first two lessons I try to focus but it strikes me that there might be a rumor spreading about me. A rumor I have no control over, one I can’t stop since no one bothers to tell me what it is.
Today I walk inside the cafeteria earlier, so I can sit down wherever I want to. I left class alone. I tried to talk to some people but they all either ignored me or faced away. With highspeed I grab some salted potatoes and a salad with rucola, sunflower seeds and tomatoes. I walk past Piper’s unofficial table and sit down at a different one close to the window. I sit at an empty table, staring at my meal. I don’t know if I should hurry and just leave or take my time. But leave where? There’s no place for me to flee to. From the corner of my eyes I see Cora and her two besties walking past me. I smile as our eyes meet but they look away. I feel horrible for sitting here all alone. The other seven seats at this table remain unoccupied. I take some time to observe my classmates. Piper and Penelope sit with Axel and Jason again. There are two other boys at their table and three girls who look much older, maybe seventeen.
After lunch I go to the restroom to wash my hands before I go to class. The last lesson today is math. I walk towards the sink and look at myself in the mirror. The dark circles around my eyes tell that I haven’t slept much last night.
“Sammy,” I hear Piper say behind me. I just want her to leave. And I hate it when someone calls me Sammy. It’s too boyish. The last person on ear
th I want to talk to right now is Piper. She’s the reason I can’t fit in at Maywood. She is the reason that this embarrassing rumor spread. “How are you?”
The door closes behind Penelope who appears behind Piper. I don’t even know if Piper sent the photo around or if Penelope did.
“Just let it go, Piper,” I say and turn towards the exit.
She grabs my shoulders and holds me back. “Wait. Don’t go, Sam.”
I don’t like Sam either. Why can’t people just stick with Samantha? Not everybody likes nicknames. In kindergarten the other children used to call me Ginger, simply because of the color of my hair. No one else in my kindergarten had copper red hair. In middle school people started calling me Samantha, my one and only name. My best friend started calling me Goldie because of my last name Goldinger and some copied it, but I honestly find that one cute. I felt like Goldie fits me since my copper red hair also shines goldish sometimes. It sounds nice. And shouldn’t everyone be comfortable with their nicknames? I step back and bump into the edge of the sink. It hurts for a second.
“Your make-up looks terrible today,” she says and squints her eyes. “No, wait, that’s your face.”
Penelope giggles and walks inside one of the toilet cabins, then Piper lets go of me and washes her hands. I don’t know why she’s picking on me. I didn’t do anything, did I? I can’t remember anything that I’ve said or done that evening when she started to treat me like this. When she started to treat me like I wasn’t worth talking to or smiling at or spending time with. When everyone started doing that. Whenever she starts something, everybody just blindly follows her. I’ve never met someone like Piper before.
I hurry to leave the restroom. I need to get my biology book before I go to class. Depending on who I sit next to they probably won’t let me look inside their book when I forget mine. Only a few days earlier everything was okay. I didn’t expect my new school to be like this. I didn’t expect the girls and boys to be so mean. All they care about are stupid sex talks and their appearance.